The act (or result of the act)
of transforming human properties, relations and actions into properties, relations
and actions of man‑produced things which have become independent (and
which are imagined as originally independent) of man and govern his life. Also
transformation of human beings into thing‑like beings which do not behave
in a human way but according to the laws of the thing‑world. Reification
is a ‘special’ case of ALIENATION, its most radical and widespread form characteristic
of modern capitalist society.

There is no term and no explicit
concept of reification in Hegel, but some of his analyses seem to come close
to it e.g. his analysis of the beobachtende Vernunft (observing reason),
in the Phenomenology of Mind, or his analysis of property in his Philosophy
of Right. The real history of the concept of reification begins with Marx
and with Lukács’s interpretation of Marx. Although the idea of reification is
implicit already in the early works of Marx (e.g., in the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts), an explicit analysis and use of ‘reification’ begins in his
later writings and reaches its peak in the Grundrisse, and Capital.
The two most concentrated discussions of reification are to be found in Capital
I, ch. I sect. 4, and in Capital III, ch. 48. In the first of these,
on COMMODITY FETISHISM, there is no definition of reification but basic elements
for a theory of reification are nevertheless given in a number of pregnant statements:

The mystery of the commodity form, therefore, consists in the fact
that in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective
characteristic, a social natural quality of the labour product itself ...
The commodity form, and the value relation between the products of labour
which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their
physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. It
is simply a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes,
the fantastic form of a relation between things ... This I call the fetishism
which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced
as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of
commodities ... To the producers the social relations connecting the labours
of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations
between individuals at work, but as what they really are, thinglike relations
between persons and social relations between things.... To them their own
social action takes the form of the action of things, which rule the producers
instead of being ruled by them.

In the second discussion, Marx
summarizes briefly the whole previous analysis which has shown that reification
is characteristic not only of the commodity, but of all basic categories of
capitalist production (money, capital, profit, etc.). He insists that reification
exists to a certain extent in ‘all social forms insofar as they reach the level
of commodity production and money circulation’, but that ‘in the capitalist
mode of production and in capital which is its dominating category ... this
enchanted and perverted world develops still further’. Thus in the developed
form of capitalism reification reaches its peak:

In capital‑profit, or
still better capital‑interest, land‑ground rent, labour‑wages,
in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component
parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete
mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the reification
[Verdinglichung] of social relations and immediate coalescence of the
material production relations with their historical and social determination.
It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy‑turvy world, in which Monsieur
le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost‑walking as social characters
and at the same time directly as things. (Capital III, ch. 48.)

As equivalent in meaning with
Verdinglichung Marx uses the term Versachlichung, and the reverse
of Versachlichung he calls Personifizierung. Thus he speaks about
‘this personification of things and reification of the relations of production’.
He regards as the ideological counterparts of ‘reification’ and ‘personification’,
‘crude materialism’ and ‘crude idealism’ or ‘fetishism’: ‘The crude materialism
of the economists who regard as the natural properties of things what
are social relations of production among people, and qualities which things
obtain because they are subsumed under these relations, is at the same time
just as crude an idealism, even fetishism, since it imputes social relations
to things as inherent characteristics, and thus mystifies them.’ (Grundrisse,
p. 687).

Despite the fact that the problem
of reification was discussed by Marx in Capital, published partly during
his life time, and partly soon after his death, which was generally recognized
as his master work, his analysis was very much neglected for a long time. A
greater interest in the problem developed only after Lukács drew attention to
it and discussed it in a creative way, combining influences coming from Marx
with those from Max Weber (who elucidated important aspects of the problem in
his analyses of bureaucracy and rationalization; see Lowith 1932) and from Simmel
(who discussed the problem in The Philosophy of Money). In the central
and longest chapter of History and Class Consciousness on ‘Reification
and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’, Lukács starts from the viewpoint
that ‘commodity fetishism is a specific problem of our age, the age of
modern capitalism’ (p. 84), and also that it is not a marginal problem but ‘the
central structural problem of capitalist society’ (p. 83). The ‘essence of commodity‑structure’,
according to Lukács has already been clarified, in the following way: ‘Its basis
is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus
acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational
and all‑embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature:
the relation between people’ (p. 83). Leaving aside ‘the importance of this
problem for economics itself’ Lukács undertook to discuss the broader question:
‘how far is commodity exchange together with its structural consequences able
to influence the total outer and inner life of society?’ (p. 84). He
points out that two sides of the phenomenon of reification or commodity fetishism
have been distinguished (which he calls the ‘objective’ and the subjective’):
‘Objectively a world of objects and relations between things springs
into being (the world of commodities and their movements on the market)...
Subjectivelywhere the market economy has been fully developeda
man’s activity becomes estranged from himself, it turns into a commodity which,
subject to the non‑human objectivity of the natural laws of society, must
go its own way independently of man just like any consumer article.’ (p. 87).
Both sides undergo the same basic process and are subordinated to the same laws.
Thus the basic principle of capitalist commodity production, ‘the principle
of rationalization based on what is and can be calculated’ (p. 88) extends
to all fields, including the worker’s ‘soul’, and more broadly, human consciousness.
‘Just as the capitalist system continuously produces and reproduces itself economically
on higher levels, the structure of reification progressively sinks more deeply,
more fatefully and more definitively into the consciousness of man’ (p. 93).

It seems that the problem of
reification was somehow in the air in the early 1920s. In the same year as Lukács
book appeared, the Soviet economist I. I. Rubin published his Essays on Marx’s
Theory of Value (in Russian; see Rubin 1972), the first part of which is
devoted to ‘Marx’s Theory of Commodity Fetishism’. The book was less ambitious
than Lukács’s (concentrating on reification in economics) and also less radical;
while Lukács found some place for ‘alienation’ in his theory of reification,
Rubin was inclined to regard the theory of reification as the scientific reconstruction
of the utopian theory of alienation. Nevertheless, both Lukács and Rubin were
heavily attacked as ‘Hegelians’ and ‘idealists’ by the official representatives
of the Third International.

The publication of Marx’s Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts was a great support for the kind of interpretation
of Marx begun by Lukács but this was fully recognized only after the second
world war. Although the discussion of reification never became as extensive
and intense as that about alienation, a number of outstanding Marxists such
as Goldmann, J. Gabel and K. Kosik have made valuable contributions to it. Not
only have the works of Marx and Lukács been discussed afresh, but also Heidegger’s
Being and Time, which concludes with the following remarks and questions:
‘That the ancient ontology works with "thing‑concepts" and that
there is a danger "of reifying consciousness" has been well known
for a long time. But what does reification mean? Where does it originate from?
... Why does this reification come again and again to domination? How is the
Being of consciousness positively structured so that reification remains inadequate
to it?’ Goldmann maintained that these questions are directed against Lukács
(whose name is not mentioned) and that the influence of Lukács can be seen in
some of Heidegger’s positive ideas.

A number of more substantial
questions about reification have also been discussed. Thus there has been much
controversy about the relation between reification, alienation, and commodity
fetishism. While some have been inclined to identify reification either with
alienation or with commodity fetishism (or with both), others want to keep the
three concepts distinct. While some have regarded alienation as an ‘idealist’
concept to be replaced by the ‘materialist’ concept of ‘reification’, others
have regarded ‘alienation’ as a philosophical concept whose sociological counterpart
is ‘reification’. According to the prevailing view alienation is a broader phenomenon,
and reification one of its forms or aspects. According to M. Kangrga ‘reification
is a higher, that is the highest form of alienation’ (1968, p. 18), and reification
is not merely a concept but a methodological requirement for a critical study
and practical ‘change, or better the destruction of the whole reified structure.’
(ibid. p. 82).